I think it was Brendan Leonard of Semi-Rad who made the statement (something to the effect of), “What is life but a series of arbitrary stupid goals?”

If I remember correctly, it was in his book, I Hate Running and You Can Too, and he was talking about how we runners will often run a little extra to meet an arbitrary stupid goal. For example, if your run is done at 3.89 miles, most runners (self included) will run around the block to make it an even 4—even though that extra .11 isn’t fundamentally changing anything. It’s an arbitrary stupid goal, to get that even 4. But we humans constantly set these types of goals, just to feel the satisfaction of meeting them. Even though no one (besides ourselves) will really care if we do or don’t. read more